Just an Okilly Dokilly Kind of Night

Riding little sleep from Thursday night didn’t keep me from going out another night for music. However, a lot of great music out there on the same night came keep me from things I want to catch that are awesome too. First thing, I want to give a shout out to the Darling Sounds for the awesome new album release! I wasn’t able to make it, but I did pick up the album digitally. I highly recommend others go check out their new album!

For the release show I did end up this fateful Friday night that would be our local Simpsons themed Okilly Dokilly over at the Crescent Ballroom. First, I opened up with their awesome Carne Asada burrito. Then the show opened up with what turned out to be about half the Oxford Coma. Nevertheless, they did write all new songs for the set this night. I am super curious to hear what the songs with the full band in the future! In the meantime, it was a harder sounding instrumental last night from them.

American Standards hit the stage next. Correction, most of them did. Their lead singer, Brandon Kellum, came out of the green room with a megaphone to start off the first song. This hardcore punk band comes onto my radar when Mitch, of Moovalya and Knuckle Buster, joined them a couple months ago. They are a fun ride to watch. I enjoyed every moment of their set and hope to catch them more in the future.

Okilly Dokilly’s time to commemorate their first new album, titled “Howdilly Doodilly,” was upon us. Tonight they added a broken TV set to the front middle of the stage, with a skull that slowly would melt and bleed inside. If you do not know Okilly Dokilly, all their songs are based on Simpsons quotes and put to a mostly hard metal sound. What the band and its fans like to call their brand of “Nedal.” They do have a little Beatles inspired slower portion that involves an acoustic guitar and singing about a “Yellow Family.” Why the Beatles? Simple, that’s Ned Flander’s favorite band. They brought the inflatable donut and got the crowd moving to destroy that donut. The mission and that set was a success.

The lack of sleep was not coming to keep that from being the end of the night. I jumped over to Yucca for Grave Danger. I don’t always catch them, but they are one of my favorites to watch in the Phoenix scene. I entered to catch Kevin Daly entertaining the crowd with funny anecdotes while this may have been the most setup I’ve seen from a Yucca sound guy. If you’re unfamiliar with Grave Danger, I’d more closely associate them to Rockabilly and an old school Rock ‘n Roll with a dark sense of humor. They played an awesome near two hour set! That was the best band to close my night too.